With the new steroids/baseball web site now decently publicized, I am seeing blog comments on it and emails about it, and am responding as best finite time allows.
What truly amazes me, though it's nothing new, is the number of people who feel well-qualified to offer extensive comments (usually flames) about what they clearly have not read. I do not have to deduce this from their manifest ignorance of what the site actually says--though one easily could--because many of them begin with remarks like "I stopped reading after the first couple of paragraphs".
We're talking here about I don't know how many thousands of words over quite a few site pages, and these folks feel competent to dissect at length a vague preliminary impression.
I do not, never have, and never will understand the sort of arrogance that enables someone to act like that. I can deal with people who read at least the entire front page and then offer criticisms or ask sharp questions. Some such questions have led me to expanded research that has, I think, improved the site. But remarks right out of total ignorance of the material are dumbfounding.
It is, I suppose, some small cold comfort to notice that that class of commenter, almost without fail, writes with bad grammar and worse spelling ("Mark Mcquire"--repeated, so it's not a typo), which are, for me, clear marks of a certain intellectual capacity. But it still burns me.
And that's all my daylong answering has left me time for here.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
RTFM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
A few comments and questions after reading the entire main page, and some of the other pages. I chose to err on the side of timeliness vs. completeness, as you've presented an incredible amount of information.
Are all of the medical effects ascribed to 'steroids' reasonably consistent across all different varieties (excluding the liver effects from the oral versions that you mentioned)?
In the discussion on the main page of the factors leading to swing speed, and therefore power, you translate 'legs and torso' into 'lower-body'. Perhaps that is consistent with the effect of steroids (i.e. they only improve arm/shoulder/upper chest), but I suspect that many readers would look at the torso as 'upper body' and may be confused by your distinction. I certainly was.
Next, I'm not sure it changes the overall point much, but if you're defining 'Major League Baseball' as including the minor leagues, some players in lower levels are still adolescents, for whom usage can be quite physically damaging.
Finally, since your conclusions recommend removal from the Controlled Substances list, I think it's fair to address usage beyond baseball. As such, I think you're 'handwaving' the risks of usage for younger football players in high school or early college. Legality would likely, though not necessarily, reduce the high costs that might limit current access/usage. And not from 'role modelling', but for competitive reasons ('getting to the next level') I'd expect we'd see an increase in usage among those for whom the risks are greatest.
Post a Comment